ONE CRUCIAL aspect of the rising disaffection
with globalization is the lack of citizen participation in
the global institutions that shape people's daily lives. This
public frustration is deeper and broader than the recent street
demonstrations in Seattle and Prague. Social commentators
and leaders of citizens' and intergovernmental organizations
are increasingly taking heed. Over the past 18 months, President
Clinton has joined with the secretary-general of the United
Nations, the director-general of the World Trade Organization
(WTO), the managing director of the International Monetary
Fund (IMF), and the president of the World Bank to call for
greater citizen participation in the international order.

Under the articles of agreement of the World
Trade Organization (WTO)), the food giants have been granted
unrestricted freedom to enter the seeds' markets of developing
countries. The acquisition of exclusive "intellectual
property rights" over plant varieties by international
agro-industrial interests, also favors the destruction of
bio-diversity.Acting on behalf of a handful of biotech conglomerates
GMO seeds have been imposed on farmers, often in the context
of "food aid programs". In Ethiopia, for instance,
kits of GMO seeds were handed out to impoverished farmers
with a view to rehabilitating agricultural production in the
wake of a major drought. The GMO seeds were planted, yielding
a harvest. But then the farmer came to realize that the GMO
seeds could not be replanted without paying royalties to Monsanto,
Arch Daniel Midland et al. Then, the farmers discovered that
the seeds would harvest only if they used the farm inputs
including the fertilizer, insecticide and herbicide, produced
and distributed by the biotech agribusiness companies. Entire
peasant economies were locked into the grip of the agribusiness
conglomerates. The main biotech giants in GMO include Monsanto,
Syngenta, Aventis, DuPont, Dow Chemical, Cargill and Arch
Daniel Midland